Menacing Jack was heavy-drinking loner

The image of Wearside Jack, the man who taunted detectives during the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, was that of a menacing and mysterious figure.

Yet when he was finally caught, he was unveiled as a heavy-drinking loner who spent his days drinking cheap cider and being insulted and ridiculed by local youngsters.

Even after arresting him and transferring him more than 100 miles from his Sunderland home to a West Yorkshire police station for questioning, detectives had to wait almost a day before John Humble was sober enough to be interviewed.

A police source said: "He had to be told he was in West Yorkshire, that he was in a police station and that he had been arrested. He had no idea where he was - and it came as a bit of a shock when he came round."

Consequences of audio tape

For more than a quarter of a century, Humble lived with the knowledge that he had sent police on a wild goose chase while evil murderer Peter Sutcliffe continued his killing spree.

While nobody can say for sure whether Sutcliffe would have been caught earlier had the hoax letters and cassette tape not diverted their attention, three women were murdered after they were sent to police.

Sutcliffe, the real Ripper, was even arrested but freed because his voice did not match the one on the tape - and he went on to kill the three more women.

Humble's actions also took their toll on the close-knit mining community of Castletown, where voice experts believed the hoaxer originated.

Humble had no connection with the small pit village, having lived his adult life on the other side of the River Wear which splits Sunderland in half.

It was in that same river that Humble tried to commit suicide around the time the letters were posted in 1979 but, ironically, he was pulled from the river and saved by police officers.

Humble, 50, was caught after a cold case review of the Wearside Jack inquiry last September, during which a match was found between a DNA sample taken from the envelope in which a letter was received and a sample from Humble which was retained in the police national database.

Humble was arrested at the rented house he shared with his brother Harry and sister Jean, in Flodden Road, Ford Estate, Sunderland.

The house is close to where he was brought up, in Haydon Square on the city's Hylton Lane Estate, and where he lived at the time the hoax letters and tapes were sent to police.

He was brought up by his mother Violet and after her death he and his brother and sister lived there until the early 1990s, when they moved to another property in the same street.

Neighbours said they were evicted from that address about five years ago and moved to the nearby Ford Estate area carrying their possessions in wheelie bins.

Keith and Lisa Dobbs, who now live in Humble's original Haydon Square home with their four children, said it was awful to think that was where the letters could have been penned. Mrs Dobbs, 37, said: "It makes me feel ill that we live in a place that could have been where those sick hoaxes were written."

Humble once worked on building sites but latterly worked as a window cleaner in his local area before alcohol took over his life to such a point that even on his arrest he was drunk.

After an initial interview during which Humble made no response, in the second interview he admitted that he was responsible for both the letters and the tape, but would not accept it amounted to perverting the course of justice.

His legal team pushed for a lesser charge of wasting police time.

Neighbours and relatives said his life had been on a downward spiral for years and his best friend was the bottle.

Humble, then 36, wed 40-year-old Anne Mason, after a whirlwind romance in a secret register office ceremony in 1990.

Ms Mason's family were banned from attending, with only Humble's family allowed to be there and act as witnesses.

In the early years of their marriage, Humble was the perfect stepfather to her children Joseph and Colleen.

The couple split up after nine years but have never divorced.

Humble went back to live with his brother Henry in their family's former home but started drinking heavily after his mother died soon afterwards.

At the time of his arrest, neighbours said he was seen as a harmless loner, who spent his time indoors drinking cheap cider.

One said: "John was fine when he was younger. He loved to play darts in the local pub and worked really hard on the buildings. But it all changed once he left Anne."

Neighbour Antoinette Steel, 30, said: "First thing on a morning when the shop opened (he and his brother) would go down for drink and would be back there at teatime."

Lesley Carr, 35, said: "I felt very sorry for them. They used to get in such a state with the drink. They were always getting picked on by kids around here who would even rifle their pockets in the street."

Ms Mason and her eldest child Colleen, from a previous relationship, are currently living in Nuneaton, Warwicks.